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"Dickens did not merely believe in the brotherhood of man in the weak modern way; he was the brotherhood of man, and knew it was a brotherhood in sin as well as in aspiration."

Charles John Huffam Dickens was born on Feb. 7, 1812, in the seaport town of Portsmouth, England, where his father worked for the Royal Navy. His carefree youth ended abruptly when he was 12, and his father, mother and younger siblings were forced to move into the Marshalsea debtors prison. ...